Thursday, October 16, 2008

I confess: my favorite change so far is swipe having infinite targets. This isn't thrilling for raid tanking; it doesn't come up that often. It's not close to being as good as other tank's AoE abilities, as it basically requires good positioning and every GCD to be used on swipe. But having it means AoE farming time, and that's something I've desperately missed.

Swipe (like I alluded to in my previous post) is kind of different than the other AoE abilities that tanks have, in that it's an actual physical attack. This can be bad; it is mitigated by armor, can be blocked/parried/dodged, and requires a lot more use of it to work well for AoE threat.

But the advantage is that it's an attack, and that each separate hit can trigger 'on hit' procs. That's pretty neat, and unlike anything any other class can do against infinite mobs. There's got to be a way to shamelessly exploit this, right?

Turns out no. Or at least, none that I could find. I was hoping to find a 'chance on hit: do 10-20 damage to all mobs in 5 yards' type of thing, but that doesn't appear to exist. Still, there are ways to make your AoE nuking more fun, entertaining, or at least a bit more sustainable.

Some of the nice ones that aren't totally broken but are really, really good:

The original that started it all was Mongoose and noticing that it was up all the time. This already was better for bears than +35 agi, but when you throw in multiple mobs it becomes really fun.

For even easier farming and zero downtime, you can try using Battlemaster, which should proc multiple times a swipe with sufficient mobs.

Romulo's Poison Vial looks like just a bit more damage, but it could be fun. And the +hit helps do it even more. I'd like to either try this out or darkmoon card: maelstrom and see whether I can cause my current target to melt.

Some of the things that aren't so hot:

Shard is great normally, but the proc can only happen once every 45 seconds. The expertise is awesome but the proc? Not to be exploited. Same for hourglass or its bigger brother, Tsunami Talisman

Dragonspine Trophy has a 20 second internal cooldown. That doesn't make it bad, but it does mean you're basically getting 110 haste or so, which isn't the hottest thing ever.

This isn't just for farming. There are raids where this change to swipe is a real benefit now. Mount Hyjal for example. When those waves of mobs get bunched I bear-up and position myself so I can hit as many as possible. It turns into a rain of numbers and my rage stays pegged at max. I really need to get a damage meter to see the results, but I'm betting it is substantial.

Another interesting trinket is the darkmoon madness card. During those aoes I've seen three of those proc'd buffs up at the same time.

Darkmoon Card: Madness.Pull those trashes, swipe them while you also mangle them and each kill you get, you buff yourself.Max I could reach was 1 minute buffs for Agi, Str, Stam, Haste. Don't remember the numbers, but it's like 35 Agi, 35 Str, 43 Stam and some Haste, like the potions/scrolls of the same type.

ThinkTank bio

About Me

Kalon likes playing tanks, no matter how hard he tries to fight it. He is not as hardcore as many but spends a lot of time thinking about WoW, and randomly rants about it now and then. He played formerly on the Argent Dawn (EU) server and was a founding member of Fire and Blood (Quel'Dorei) before joining Casually Serious, a guild devoted to hard core progression on only 8 hours of raiding time a week.
He is a devoted husband, father, and when he has the time programs software.